What is the meaning of .WORK in SAS EG and can it be removed from my table names without consequence-CodePudding

When SAS EG creates a query in the query builder it puts "work." in front of tables here is an example:

%_eg_conditional_dropds(WORK.QUERY_FOR_UNL_OBLIGATIONSBEHOLDN);

PROC SQL;
   CREATE TABLE WORK.QUERY_FOR_UNL_OBLIGATIONSBEHOLDN AS 
   SELECT t1.CUSTOM_1, 
          t1.CUSTOM_2, 
          /* REPORTING_AMOUNT */
            (SUM(t1.REPORTING_AMOUNT)) AS REPORTING_AMOUNT, 
          t1.LINE_ITEM, 
          t1.CUSTOM_5
      FROM WORK.UNL_OBLIGATIONSBEHOLDNING t1
      WHERE t1.CUSTOM_5 IN 
           (
           'VLIK9035_POS_NOTE',
           'VLIK9023_POS_COVERED_BOND'
           ) AND t1.CUSTOM_1 BETWEEN '20500000' AND '20599999' AND t1.LINE_ITEM NOT ='orphans'
      GROUP BY t1.CUSTOM_1,
               t1.CUSTOM_2,
               t1.LINE_ITEM,
               t1.CUSTOM_5;
QUIT;

If I remove "WORK." from the created table and the queried table nothing changes it works just as well as before, as far as I know.

What does it mean when a is named WORK.?

CodePudding user response：

Generally, a table is identified by a library name and a table name. A library can consist of several tables. So, the normal form is [library].[table] to identify a table. If you omit the library name SAS interprets this as work.[table] therefore you can remove 'work.' and nothing will change.

CodePudding user response：

Work is a temporary library. So yes, you can remove the work. part of your code.